Family Gathering

Yesterday was my nephew's high school graduation party. Last Sunday my niece celebrated her high school graduation. That means five of the ten nieces and nephews on my side of the family have graduated high school. With my niece's graduation, my brother and sister-in-law will become the first "empty nesters" of my siblings. And yesterday I learned my oldest three siblings now need reading glasses.

The strong current of time is washing over me.

My sister treated the family to a lovely dinner to celebrate her son's graduation. When the question went around the table for an Irish toast, we all looked around blankly until my Dad pulled one from the vault and said, "May you be in heaven an hour before the devil knows you're dead."

More and more my time with my family is like this...a few hours stolen a couple times a year. And I always feel both filled and drained afterward. Why is that? Is it because the large gathering setting doesn't allow for the quality of time we once shared? Maybe the quality isn't any different. Maybe it's because I live so far away now. I don't know what's going on in their day-to-day lives and they don't know what's going on in mine. But I'm not sure I'd see my family much more if we lived closer. Is it a condition of growing up, building our own lives, that we must push off, the familiar nest of our youth a place we can never return to?